GUSTO
Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) birth cohort
Singapore mother-offspring birth cohort of Chinese, Malay and Indian families recruited in pregnancy in 2009 and 2010, with neonatal brain MRI (T2w, DTI at 1.5 T) and repeated child brain MRI (T1w, resting-state fMRI at 3 T) from 4.5 to 10.5 years. Data are shared through collaboration with the cohort investigators.
Overview
Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) is a mother-offspring birth cohort run by the National University of Singapore, KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) and A*STAR. Its first aim was to study how early-life factors shape the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes, and it has grown into a multi-domain study that also covers allergy, neurodevelopment and mental health. Brain MRI is collected in a subset of the children, once shortly after birth and repeatedly through childhood. Data and biospecimens are shared through collaboration with the cohort investigators.
Composition
Pregnant women of Chinese, Malay or Indian background, who were Singapore citizens or permanent residents, were recruited at their first-trimester ultrasound visit at the National University Hospital and KKH between June 2009 and September 2010. Mothers on chemotherapy or psychotropic drugs, or with type 1 diabetes, were excluded. Published papers give different totals for the number of women recruited (1,247 in a 2024 paper, 1,450 in a 2025 paper), so no total is listed here. A 2014 imaging paper reports that 189 GUSTO infants took part in the neonatal neuroimaging study. The child scans are reported only for analysis samples, for example 296 children with 642 usable T1w scans and 256 children with 509 usable resting-state scans in a 2024 paper.
Acquisition
Neonates were scanned at 5 to 17 days after birth on a 1.5 T GE scanner at KKH, in natural sleep without sedation, with fast spin-echo T2w imaging and single-shot echo-planar DTI (19 directions at b = 600 s/mm², 3 mm slices). Children were scanned at 4.5, 6, 7.5 and 10.5 years at 3 T: a Siemens Magnetom Skyra at 4.5 and 6 years and a Siemens Magnetom Prisma at 7.5 and 10.5 years. The child protocol includes a 1 mm isotropic T1w MPRAGE and resting-state fMRI.
Annotations
No manual labels are described. A neuroradiologist reviewed the neonatal brain scans.
Known limitations
- Only a subset of the cohort was scanned, and no source that could be opened gives cohort-wide counts per imaging wave.
- The neonatal and child scans differ in field strength, vendor and contrasts; the neonatal wave has no T1w scan.
- The collaboration guidelines and data catalogue could not be read, so the terms of use are unknown.
Cohort
Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the largest value.
Field strength
subjects
- 1.5 T 189
License and access
Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer
A research proposal is reviewed and approved
Researchers who want data or biospecimens fill in an expression-of-interest form and must discuss the project and reach an agreement with a GUSTO investigator. The collaboration guidelines and the data catalogue are hosted on gustodatavault.sg.
No published license or data use terms
The data holder has published no license and no data use terms. Any use, sharing or commercial right has to be agreed with the data holder, and nothing can be assumed to be allowed. Default copyright and data protection law still apply.
The request page names collaboration guidelines and an agreement with the investigators, but no license or data use terms could be read: the guidelines on gustodatavault.sg sit behind a bot check that blocked every attempt to open them. The imaging papers state that the authors do not have permission to share the data.
What you can do
- Commercial use Not stated
- Not stated
- Train ML models Not stated
- Create derived data Not stated
- Publish results Not stated
What you can share
- Share the data Not stated
- Share derived data Not stated
- Share trained models Not stated
What you must do
- Cite or credit Not stated
- Share alike Not stated
- Sign an agreement Not stated
- Ethics approval Not stated
- Manuscript review Not stated
- Release code Not stated
- Return results Not stated
- Delete after use Not stated
Limits
- No re-identification Not stated
- Location limits Not stated
Citation
Soh SE, Tint MT, Gluckman PD, Godfrey KM, Rifkin-Graboi A, Chan YH, Stünkel W, Holbrook JD, Kwek K, Chong YS, Saw SM; GUSTO Study Group. Cohort profile: Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) birth cohort study. Int J Epidemiol 43(5):1401-1409 (2014). doi:10.1093/ije/dyt125
All numbers
Every number on this page, as stored in stats.csv, with its source.
| Measure | Breakdown | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects | field_strength=1.5 GUSTO infants who took part in the neonatal neuroimaging study, scanned at 5 to 17 days on a 1.5 T GE scanner (Methods, MRI Acquisition); child scans at 3 T are not counted cohort-wide in an open source | 189 | broekman2014 Methods, Subjects |
Sources
The keys used in the table above.
- soh2014 Soh et al. 2014, Cohort profile, International Journal of Epidemiology (PubMed record 23912809) paper
- soh2012 Soh et al. 2012, The methodology of the GUSTO cohort study, Asia Pacific Allergy paper
- lopezvicente2024 López-Vicente et al. 2024, Prenatal stress, polygenic risk for ADHD and brain growth in childhood, Developmental Psychobiology paper
- broekman2014 Broekman et al. 2014, Gestational age and neonatal brain microstructure in term born infants, PLoS ONE paper
- koyama2025 Koyama et al. 2025, Maternal depressive symptoms in childhood and offspring brain volumetric change from age 4-10 years, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience paper
- koyama2024 Koyama et al. 2024, Harsh parenting, amygdala functional connectivity changes across childhood, and behavioral problems, Psychological Medicine paper
- gusto-request-to-collaborate GUSTO and S-PRESTO, Request to Collaborate page website